As a 9/11  survivor, I’m often asked questions about my escape from the North Tower.

Most people, if they gathered enough courage to ask me, want to know the following:

(1) What did you feel when the plane hit the tower?

Answer: I felt the floor swaying in slow motion 5 times, and then the light dimmed for a few seconds, and then I heard a strange sound of falling sand – everything happened very fast.  But there’s no loud bang or terrifying scenes like that in the  movie. It was not till I left the building that I saw the scary big hole in the tower.

(2) How long did you take to run away?

Answer: Hmm… you don’t run down the stairs, especially with a crowd. I remembered walking down step-by-step,  there were no pushing or shouting, and occasionally we stopped for a few seconds while a fireman walked up with his heavy suit and equipments.  While I was in the stairway, I learned that there was a plane that hit the tower, someone with a cellphone was telling everyone what he heard from his wife.  But we did not know that it was a terrorist attack.

(3) Did you see the building falling?  You must have heard the South Tower falling?

Answer: No, I did not see the building falling.  I was smart enough to know that I need to get away as soon as I can — in fact I only stayed around for 10 mins once I got out the building and then I decided to start walking back home a hundred blocks away.   If there’s any noise, it was when we were  getting on the bridge to cross from North Tower to the World Financial center, I heard big bangs, and I thought that was the sound of the building debris.  But later, I was very sad to understand that the bangs were from the falling human bodies.

The above may be tough to read.  I understand people are not just curious, but they are gathering data to think if they can survive if they ever encounter similar attacks.  And I don’t believe that any advanced information technologies or intelligence technologies could have helped in understanding the human experience.

I remember 9/11 morning a beautiful morning as I walked out of the subway heading towards the North Tower.

We were attacked and we survived. We are stronger.